From radical black feminism to postfeminist hashtags: re-claiming intersectionality
Autor/in:
Villesèche, Florence; Muhr, Sara Louise; Sliwa, Martyna
Quelle: ephemera. theory & politics in organization, 18 (2018) 1, S 1–16
Inhalt: The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s. Originally, it referred specifically to the vulnerable position of black women victims of domestic violence in the socio-legal context of the United States. In a nutshell, Crenshaw argues that the particular situation of black women cannot be equated with that of white women victims or with the larger discrimination faced by the black population, and thus the legal apparatus is not conceived to appropriately consider their cases. In addition, an underlying aim was to contest the assumed ‘colour-blindness, neutrality and objectivity’ of the criminal justice system in the US (Nash, 2008: 2; Crenshaw, 1989). Besides its root in the legal field, the term ‘intersectionality’ mirrors debates brought about by radical black feminists in the previous decades and which centres on a critique of a western, white feminism that claims universal reach.
Schlagwörter:binary; epistemology; Feminism; Gruppe; Identität; Identity; Individuum; Intersectionality; Kategorie; Konstruktion; Konstruktivismus; Medien; Postfeminism; Postkolonialismus; race; Social aspects; Theorie; theory
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt
Coping and Sexual Harassment : How Victims Cope across Multiple Settings
Autor/in:
Scarduzio, Jennifer A.; Sheff, Sarah E.; Smith, Mathew
Quelle: Archives of sexual behavior, 47 (2018) 2, S 327–340
Inhalt: The ways sexual harassment occurs both online and in face-to-face settings has becomemore complicated. Sexual harassment that occurs in cyberspace or online sexual harassment adds complexity to the experiences of victims, current research understandings, and the legal dimensions of this phenomenon. Social networking sites (SNS) are a type of social media that offer unique opportunities to users and sometimes the communication that occurs on SNS can cross the line from flirtation into online sexual harassment. Victims of sexual harassment employ communicative strategies such as coping to make sense of their experiences of sexual harassment. The current study qualitatively examined problem-focused, active emotion-focused, and passive emotion-focused coping strategies employed by sexual harassment victims across multiple settings.
Schlagwörter:Active emotion-focused coping; Arbeitsklima; bullying; cyber violence; Interview; Online sexual harassment; Passive emotion-focused coping; Problem-focused coping; qualitative analysis; sexual harassment; sexuelle Belästigung; work culture
CEWS Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt
Sexual harassment is rife in US science : Science academies call for cultural shift to fight problem
Autor/in:
Witze, Alexandra
Quelle: Nature, 558 (2018) 21 June 2018, S 352–353
Inhalt: Sexual harassment is pervasive throughout academic science in the United States, driving some talented researchers out of the field and harming others’ careers, finds a report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC. The analysis concludes that policies to fight the problem are ineffective because they are set up to protect institutions, not victims — and that universities, funding agencies, scientific societies and other organizations must take stronger action.
“The cumulative effect of sexual harassment is extremely damaging,” says Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. “It’s critical to move beyond the notion of legal compliance to really addressing culture.”
Schlagwörter:#MeToo; Arbeitsklima; bullying; gender-based violence; Hochschulbeschäftigte; Hostility; sexism in research; sexual harassment; sexuelle Belästigung; Universität; USA
CEWS Kategorie:Arbeitswelt und Arbeitsmarkt, Hochschulen, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt
Inhalt: Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the greatest social issues affecting South Africa, and universities are no exception. This article reports preliminary results of a pilot study conducted at the University of South Africa (Unisa). The study aimed to ascertain perceptions of GBV among university staff. A range of frequency-seeking questions aimed at exploring awareness, experiences, and reflections about solutions to GBV were posed to selected staff members by means of an online survey. The results of the survey are presented here in graphic form and subjected to descriptive analysis, which is compared with existing literature on the topic. The key findings in this pilot study concern the perceptions of GBV among university staff, their awareness of the types of GBV and its prevalence, and the participants’ feelings about safety regarding GBV and commitment to participate in possible solutions. We conclude that we cannot expect trends reported in literature to be replicated in any research study.
Schlagwörter:abuse; domestic violence; gender-based violence; geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt; Hochschulpersonal; perceptions; South Africa; Südafrika; university staff
CEWS Kategorie:Hochschulen, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt
Quelle: RES (Revista Española de Sociología), 27 (2018) 3, S 434-449
Inhalt: Nowadays gender-based violence has not only grown but it has become increasingly evident in gender stereotypes upheld by younger people. Universal education is necessary to eradicate these stereotypes in university classrooms. The aim of this work is to find if a relationship exists between sexism and the choice of degree among university students, and if this relates to national culture. We applied the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Expósito, Moya and Glick, 1998 and the Dating Violence Questionnaire by Rodríguez-Franco et al., 2007) to 1,196 university students. The results show that there is a relationship between sexism and the student’s choice of degree course and, particularly, that there is more sexism in technical degrees than in humanities degrees. The cultural ideology is similar between Mexico and Catalonia and only varies in its intensity. It concludes that gender equality education is urgently needed as a general course in technical degrees.
A Systematic Look at a Serial Problem: Sexual Harassment of Students by University Faculty
Autor/in:
Chi Chantalupo, Nancy; Kidder, William
Quelle: Utah Law Review, (2018) , S 671–786
Inhalt: One in ten female graduate students at major research universities report being sexually harassed by a faculty member. Many universities face intense media scrutiny regarding faculty sexual harassment, and whether women are being harassed out of academic careers in scientific disciplines is currently a subject of significant public debate. However, to date, scholarship in this area is significantly constrained. Surveys cannot entirely mesh with the legal/policy definition of sexual harassment. Policymakers want to know about serial (repeat) sexual harassers, where answers provided by student surveys are least satisfactory. Strict confidentiality restrictions block most campus sexual harassment cases from public view.
Taking advantage of recent advances in data availability, this article represents the most comprehensive effort to inventory and analyze actual faculty sexual harassment cases. This review includes over 300 cases obtained from: (1) media reports; (2) federal civil rights investigations by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice; (3) lawsuits by students alleging sexual harassment; and (4) lawsuits by tenure-track faculty fired for sexual harassment. It also situates this review within the available and most relevant social science literature on sexual harassment and violence in education and the workplace, as well as on methodological limitations of litigated case data, which tend to contain a higher concentration of high-severity cases compared to a random sample.
Two key findings emerged from the data. First, contrary to popular assumptions, faculty sexual harassers are not engaged primarily in verbal behavior. Rather, most of the cases reviewed for this study (53%) involved faculty alleged to have engaged in unwelcome physical contact dominated by groping, sexual assault, and domestic abuse-like behaviors. Second, more than half (53%) of cases involved professors allegedly engaged in serial sexual harassment. Thus, this study adds to our understanding of sexual harassment in the university setting and informs a number of related policy and legal questions including academic freedom, prevention, sanctions, and the so-called “pass-the-harasser” phenomenon of serial sexual harassers relocating to new university positions.
Schlagwörter:sexual harassment; civil rights; sexual assault; faculty; professors; graduate students; education law; #MeToo; OCR; litigation; academia; women in science; gender; repeat harassment; power disparity; accountability; termination; academic freedom; sexuelle Belästigung; sexuelle Gewalt; Verantwortlichkeit; Machtgefälle; Frauen in der Wissenschaft
What’s in a name? Theorising the Inter-relationships of gender and violence
Autor/in:
Boyle, Karen
Quelle: Feminist Theory, 20 (2018) 1, S 19–36
Inhalt: This article explores the representational practices of feminist theorising around gender and violence. Adapting Liz Kelly’s notion of the continuum of women’s experiences of sexual violence, I argue that ‘continuum thinking’ can offer important interventions which unsettle binaries, recognise grey areas in women’s experiences and avoid ‘othering’ specific communities. Continuum thinking allows us to understand connections whilst nevertheless maintaining distinctions that are important conceptually, politically and legally. However, this is dependent upon recognising the multiplicity of continuums in feminist theorising – as well as in policy contexts – and the different ways in which they operate. A discussion of contemporary theory and policy suggests that this multiplicity is not always recognised, resulting in a flattening of distinctions which can make it difficult to recognise the specifically gendered patterns of violence and experience. I conclude by considering how focusing on men’s behaviour might offer one way of unsettling the contemporary orthodoxy which equates gender-based violence and violence against women.
Schlagwörter:feminist theories; feministische Theorie; gender-based violence; Geschlechterbegriff; Gewalt; Gewalt gegen Frauen; Policy; sexualisierte Gewalt; violence; violence against women
CEWS Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt
Quelle: Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 99 (2018) , S 258–272
Inhalt: Sexual objectification is a widespread phenomenon characterized by a focus on the individual's physical appearance over his/her mental state. This has been associated with negative social consequences, as objectified individuals are judged to be less human, competent, and moral. Moreover, behavioral responses toward the person change as a function of the degree of the perceived sexual objectification. In the present study, we investigated how behavioral and neural representations of other social pain are modulated by the degree of sexual objectification of the target. Using a within-subject fMRI design, we found reduced empathic feelings for positive (but not negative) emotions toward sexually objectified women as compared to non-objectified (personalized) women when witnessing their participation to a ball-tossing game. At the brain level, empathy for social exclusion of personalized women recruited areas coding the affective component of pain (i.e., anterior insula and cingulate cortex), the somatosensory components of pain (i.e., posterior insula and secondary somatosensory cortex) together with the mentalizing network (i.e., middle frontal cortex) to a greater extent than for the sexually objectified women. This diminished empathy is discussed in light of the gender-based violence that is afflicting the modern society.
Is Europe Cascading into Fascism? : Addressing Key Concepts including Gender and Violence
Autor/in:
Walby, Sylvia
Quelle: PaG (Politics and Governance), 6 (2018) 3, 67 S
Inhalt: Is Europe cascading into fascism? The answer to this question matters for understanding the opposition to gender equality projects in Europe. The article addresses some of the key concepts needed to answer this question. Is ‘fascism’ or ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ or just ‘neoliberalism’ the most appropriate concept to capture the turn to the right? The article compares the extent to which these concepts encompass ‘violence’ and ‘gender’. ‘Fascism’ is an important benchmark from European history, but Europe has not yet reached its levels of violence. The qualifier ‘authoritarian’ is not needed for ‘neoliberalism’ since it generates a trajectory towards violence. Some conceptual work is required in order to develop ‘neoliberalism’ to encompass ‘gender’ and ‘violence’, but there are bodies of work that support such a development. Including gender in analyses of the macro level changes occurring in Europe requires the concept of ‘varieties of gender regime’, which enables the conceptualisation of neoliberalism as gendered.
The ‘crisis’ of white hegemony, neonationalist femininities and antiracist feminism
Autor/in:
Keskinen, Suvi
Quelle: Women's Studies International Forum, 68 (2018) , S 157–163
Inhalt: The rise of neonationalist politics and racist activism has characterised many European countries in recent years. Moreover, there is a growing public focus on gendered and sexualised intimacies. These two tendencies have increasingly intertwined and sexual violence has become a site for struggles over feminist and (anti)racist politics. The article examines what I call the ‘crisis’ of white hegemony arising in the aftermath of the arrival of a large number of refugees in 2015–2016 and the different strategies that women's and feminist activism has developed. Within white nationalism, there is an upsurge of ‘white border guard femininities’: white women who mobilise on social media and in far-right groups. Simultaneously, antiracist feminist activism has strengthened. It seeks to confront racist discourses of foreign perpetrators and to redirect the discussion by addressing structural aspects of racial and gendered hierarchies and voicing experiences of harassment that are bypassed in the public discussions.
Schlagwörter:Anti-Feminismus; Diskurs; Feminismus; Finnland; Gleichstellung; people of color; Postkolonialismus; Rassismus
CEWS Kategorie:Gleichstellungspolitik, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt